The present invention relates generally to a mail inserting system and, more particularly, to the document releasing and collating section of a mail inserting system.
In a typical mailing inserting system, a plurality of enclosure or input document feeders are used to release enclosure documents onto a chassis or deck. The released documents are gathered, collated and pushed by a plurality of pusher fingers toward the downstream end of the chassis for envelope insertion. Mail inserting systems are known in the art. For example, Roetter et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,169,341) discloses a mail inserting system consisting of a document collation section and an envelope insertion section, wherein a plurality of document feeders are used to release documents onto a continuous conveying mechanism that collects and collates the documents and then conveys the collated documents to the envelope insertion section in a continuous manner. Such a mail inserting system is shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, the mail inserting system 1 has an envelope insertion section 8 and a document release and collation section 10 having an upstream end 102 and a downstream end 104. The envelope insertion section 8 is located adjacent to the downstream end 104, where an envelope feeder 14 is used to feed envelopes 12 onto an envelope insertion area 106. In the document releasing and collation section 10, a plurality of enclosure feeders 20 are used to feed enclosure documents 22 onto a chassis or deck 26. The released documents 22 are gathered, collated and pushed downstream by a plurality of pushed finger pairs 40 mounted on two chains or belts 42, as shown in FIG. 2. The belts 42 carry the pusher finger pairs 40 from the upstream end 102 to the downstream end 104 of the document release and collation section 10, whereby the collated documents are conveyed to the envelope insertion area 106 for envelope insertion. The belts 42 move in synchronism with each other so that the pusher fingers in each pair 40 are also moved in synchronism with each other. Advantageously, the belts 42 also move in constant speed so that the enclosure feeders 20 can release the documents in synchronism with the approaching pusher finger pairs 40. Each enclosure feeder 20 has a plurality of rollers 24 for releasing the documents, one at a time. The rollers 24 of the enclosure feeder 20 can be under the control of a central enclosure feeder control module 70 (see FIG. 4). If there are M enclosure feeders 20 that are actually used in the mail inserting system and each of the feeders 20 releases one document to each approaching pusher finger pair 40, then each pusher finger pair 40 will gather and collate a total of M enclosure documents from the upstream end 102 to the downstream end 104.
If one or two pusher fingers in a pair 40 in the document release and collation section 10 are missing, broken, loose or otherwise defective, they may not be able to push and collate the enclosure documents normally. Consequently, paper jams may occur. If an operator of the mail inserting system notices this mishap in time, the operator can halt the operation and repair the defective pusher fingers. Thus, a paper jam can be averted. Even so, the halting of the machine for pusher finger repair causes a disruption of the mailing operation. Production mailing machinery is designed to have uninterrupted availability to maximize throughput of the mailing operation. Repairs count against throughput by making the machine unavailable during the repair.
It is advantageous and desirable to provide a method and system for controlling the releasing and collating of documents in a mail inserting system so as to minimize the disruption to the mailing operation due to non-functioning pusher fingers.
A typical mail inserting system, such as that shown in FIG. 1, comprises a large number of pusher finger pairs. For example, there are 46 such pairs fixedly mounted on the belts. If all of them are functioning properly, then 46 pusher finger pairs are available for document gathering and collating in one cycle. If one of the pairs is not functioning, it only affects 2.2 percent of the production throughput per cycle. Thus, it is advantageous and desirable to take this non-functioning pusher finger pair out of the operation while using all remaining pusher finger pairs to gather and collate the release documents. So long as the non-functioning pusher finger pair does not impair the operation of the mail inserting system, it will be ignored in that it is not used for document gathering and collating. At the end of mail operation, the customer of the mail inserting system may decide to repair the non-functioning pusher finger pair or keep operating the system with a slightly reduced throughput.
Thus, according to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a collation system for collating generally flat items. The system comprises:
an upstream end;
a downstream end;
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end;
a plurality of feeders, each positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the items onto the deck;
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end;
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the items released into said section by the feeders; and a sensing mechanism for sensing the position of the pusher pairs in order to determine whether a pusher pair is functional as to said pushing based on the sensed position of said pusher pair, so that the feeders release the items only onto the sections of the moving member associated with functional pusher pairs.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of improving the performance of a collation system for collating generally flat items, wherein the collation system comprises:
an upstream end;
a downstream end;
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end;
a plurality of feeders positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the items onto the deck;
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end;
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the items released into said section by the feeders. The method comprises the steps of:
sensing the position of the pusher pairs;
determining whether the pusher pairs are functional as to said pushing based on the sensed positions; and releasing the items only onto the sections of the moving member associated with functional pusher pairs.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a mail inserting system for inserting enclosure materials into envelopes for mailing. The system comprises:
an envelope insertion section for providing the envelopes for insertion;
a collation section for collating the enclosure materials, the collation section having:
an upstream end,
a downstream end adjacent to the envelope insertion station,
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end,
a plurality of feeders, each positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the enclosure materials onto the deck,
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end, and
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the enclosure materials released into said section by the feeders so as to convey the pushed enclosure materials to the envelope insertion section for insertion; and
a sensing mechanism, positioned relative to the deck of the collation section, for sensing the position of the pusher pairs in order to determine whether a pusher pair is functional as to said pushing based on the sensed position of said pusher pair, so that the feeders release the enclosure materials only on the sections of the moving member associated with functional pusher pairs.
The present invention will become apparent upon reading the description taken in conjunction with FIGS. 3 to 7.